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Niklas Swanström
The previous issue of The China and Eurasia Forum (CEF) Quarterly addressed energy security in the region and explored how growing energy demand affects states’ strategic considerations, regional cooperation, and integration. As outlined by the contributors to the last issue, the fierce competition over energy resources generates not only winners and losers, but also significant areas for cooperation that can lead to sustainable and positive results. The use and trafficking of narcotics, the security topic of this Quarterly, produce no legitimate winners, only losers. Apart from a few scrupulous individuals who profit from narcotics trafficking and production, the booming drug trade threatens to undermine and
destabilize the entire region (...)
The Drug Crime Threat to Countries Located on the Silk Road
Vladimir Fenopetov
The efforts by the international community and by the Afghan government have finally resulted in some progress in the eradication of illicit opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. As an indication of effective efforts, we have seen a 21 percent decrease of areas under cultivation in 2005 compared with the previous year. However, Afghanistan still produced 4,100 metric tons of illicit opium in 2005, the year in which, due to favorable climatic conditions, the average yield increased by 7 kg and reached 39 kg per hectare. Consequently, Afghanistan in 2005 continued to be the world’s largest source of illicit opium, accounting for 87 percent of global production (...)
The Drug Trade in Contemporary Russia
Louise Shelley
Russia has had one of the fastest growing drug problems in the world in the past five years. With its limited border controls and large illicit migration, it is now integrated into the global drug market with links to the synthetic drug markets of Western Europe and the Far East, as well as the booming heroin trade from Central Asia. Drugs are now trafficked in all regions of Russia and their use is affecting the youthful population. Russia is primarily a transit country but many of the drugs entering the country are now consumed domestically as well. The country once consumed drugs of local production but it is now tapping into imports. Russian prevention programs are almost non-existent and law enforcement has proved ineffective in dealing with the phenomenon despite the development of specialized law enforcement units (...)
Afghanistan’s Opium Production in Perspective
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
Afghanistan has been the world’s primary opium producing country since 1991, when it surpassed Burma (Myanmar) in total annual production. Both the Taliban regime and the Karzai government inherited an illicit drug economy that has been stimulated by two decades of war and also fuelled the country’s war economy. However, just as the Taliban government successfully, but counterproductively, prohibited opium production in 2001, their regime was toppled by U.S. military intervention in response to the September 11 attacks in the United States. Then, in a rather chaotic Afghanistan, opium production resumed and grew back to normal. Now, the illicit drug economy in Afghanistan is said to fuel terrorism. The Afghan government, the U.S.-led coalition and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime consider that "fighting drug trafficking equals fighting terrorism" (...)
“Who Needs Protecting?” Rethinking HIV, Drugs and Security in the China Context
Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch and Nick Bartlett
In early 2004 China began implementation of a national Methadone Maintenance Therapy (MMT) program where opiate-addicted drug users could access methadone on a daily basis as they needed it. As of December 2005, 58 clinics in 10 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities had provided voluntary outpatient treatment to more than 6500 opiate-addicted drug users. Funded with money earmarked for HIV programs, the program hopes to eventually reach 105,000 individuals. The creation of this new service has sparked lively conversation among policy-makers, many of whom frame their support of or opposition to the program in terms of its potential effect on national security (...)
Zamir Chargynov
Three significant events took place in Central Asia in 2005. The March Tulip revolution in Kyrgyzstan led to the overthrow of former President Askar Akayev; the May Andijan upheaval in Uzbekistan led President Islam Karimov to break ties with the West; an election in Kazakhstan reinstated incumbent President Nursultan Nazarbayev in December. The main beneficiary of these political developments is China which managed to further consolidate its influence in the region as a result (...)
The Narcotics Threat in Greater Central Asia: From Crime-Terror Nexus to State Infiltration
Svante Cornell
This article traces the changes in the threat posed by narcotics production and trafficking in Greater Central Asia, over time and across the four major parts of this region. The article argues that the crime-terror nexus posed the greatest threat to security in 1995-2001; but that since then, the challenge has grown more complex and that different parts of Greater Central Asia have developed in different directions: in Afghanistan and Central Asia, the crime-terror nexus has been eclipsed by the rapidly growing infiltration of state institutions by organized crime. In the South Caucasus, change has been less dramatic: the consolidation of states, especially in Georgia, has gradually put increasing pressure on both elements. In the North Caucasus, a synthesis between the crime-terror and crimestate nexuses can be observed, threatening to make the region a black hole comparable to Afghanistan in the 1990s (...)
The Logistics of Opiate Trafficking in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan
Jacob Townsend
This article investigates how criminal groups organize opiate trafficking from Afghanistan through Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. These three countries were chosen because they are a geographical axis of the Central Asian drug trade, taking heroin directly from the source in Afghanistan and moving it north to the Russian border. While Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are also transit countries, transport options through Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are less numerous and
herefore more amenable to analysis and interdiction (...)
Impact of Drug Economy and Organized Crime on State Functioning in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan
Erica Marat
Political changes in spring 2005 in Kyrgyzstan showed how organized criminal groups can pose an open threat to the government, directly participate in state politics, decrease legitimacy of the ruling elite, and escape legal persecution. Likewise, roughly a decade ago, civil war in Tajikistan illustrated how the drug trade rapidly expanded as a result of state weakness and produced lasting effects on the government’s functioning in the political, economic, and social realms. The connection between organized crime and the problem of drug trafficking in the Central Asian states has been attracting increasing attention from regional and international scholars as well as policy analysts, who saw an alarming trend in the ability of drug-barons to influence the functioning of the national governments (...)
Narcotics and China: An Old Security Threat From New Sources
Niklas Swanström
Narcotic threats to China have changed in form and structure and most visibly geographically, from being primarily a problem from Southeast Asia (Golden Triangle), with imports from Laos and Burma (Myanmar), to a more multifaceted threat. The origin of the world’s largest exporter of heroin is today Eurasia, more specifically, Afghanistan, while other products are domestic in origin. This will not only create a need for greater diversion of China’s police, customs officials and military polices to meet the challenge, it will also create common interests between some of the major transit and consumer states in Eurasia, such as Iran, European Union (EU) and Russia, all of whom suffer from narcotics transit and sales. The traditional assumption of Southeast Asia as the only point of origin for narcotics trafficked into China is not longer true (...)
The Strategic Central Asian Arena
Richard Giragosian
Central Asia has emerged as a pivotal arena of international security, with an enhanced strategic significance that has superseded the region’s geographic isolation and geopolitical marginalization. Security in Central Asia is now a key factor in the broader calculus of Russian, Chinese, and American interests. Moreover, stability in both Central Asia and along its periphery further impacts a secondary set of states, including India, Iran and Japan. This article examines the interests of the various powers in Central Asia and the quest for stability and security in the region (...)
